Friday, February 8, 2008

Hillary’s $5 million donation to Hillary

The media has interpreted Hillary Clinton's $5 million donation of her own money to the Hillary for President campaign as a sign that her campaign has hit rough financial waters.

Maybe so, but I look at it another way. This is the best democracy money can buy. The multi-millionaires compete with each other to demonstrate their compassion when they want people's vote. After the election their real constituents are the biggest corporations and banks.

Unlike Clinton, I won't be able to pony up $5 million for my campaign.

I'm a worker and union leader whose union members are losing their jobs left and right. The workers I represent in the newspaper industry don't have $5 million to spare—much less $50—as the big media CEOs (the friends of Clinton, Obama and McCain) cut thousands of jobs to make obscene fortunes from our labor.

That's why the Party for Socialism and Liberation is petitioning now in rural Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, so the people can have a real choice in November. We expect to have ballot status in 17 to 20 states.

In Tuesday's California primary, I was the top-finishing socialist candidate on the Peace and Freedom Party, and I am campaigning strongly to win the PFP nomination in the convention this summer.

The twin parties for the rich don't have to struggle to get on the ballot.

Even with full access on all 50 states, the Democrats and Republicans will still be spending well over $1 billion in their campaigns. That's because the candidates of the capitalist parties view politics through the filter of the plutocrats. This election is all about millionaires' and billionaires' money determining the election outcome.

Whether it is Mitt Romney investing $35 million of his personal fortune, or Clinton dipping into her millions and Bill Clinton's post-presidential million-dollar booty, this election is about money and the real power behind that money.

Every one of the Democratic and Republican candidates fully intends to protect the profits of the capitalists if they are elected. It is interesting that the Democrats, both Obama and Clinton, are now the larger recipients of corporate donations than the Republicans. These donations assure the corporations that the next president, whoever it may be, will sit comfortably in their pockets and do their bidding.

The newspaper industry has been devastated by mass layoffs, outsourcing and media consolidation. From the San Francisco Chronicle to the Chicago Sun Times and San Jose Mercury News, many laid-off workers are about to run out of unemployment benefits, and this is true for millions more.

Yet today in the House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans agreed not to extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks as part of the bipartisan "economic rescue" package. Their "rescue" is a pittance for workers, intended to boost spending for the benefit of big business. It provides no real solutions for millions of working and poor people who are in crisis.

Overall, in the coming year unemployment will rapidly grow. As millions of people lose their homes from foreclosures, hundreds of thousands of workers in construction will be laid off. That is fine for the banking and corporate plutocrats, their political representatives, and stock holdings. But it is a catastrophe for millions of working people.

This is the richest country in the world. The PSL is putting people's needs first. A job should be a legal right that cannot be taken away by any capitalist. The property rights of the capitalists are considered sacred—no one is legally entitled to take the property of the capitalist owners. We are demanding that a worker's job be vested with the same legal entitlement as any other property right. The PSL candidates are for enshrining a 'Job as a Legal Right' into the constitution of the United States.

If you can spend millions to win elected office you won't lose sleep over the unemployment crisis in the United States. The La Riva/Puryear campaign represents the interests of the tens of millions of workers who have no cushion, who are worried about their jobs and holding onto their homes, who are driven into bankruptcy by lack of healthcare.

Our campaign represents the forces in society looking for deep, profound and radical change. We aim for change not as an empty campaign slogan, but in the day-in and day-out struggle of working people who vote every four years but whose interests are never represented in the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court.

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About Me

Gloria La Riva is the 2008 presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Born in Albuquerque, N.M., La Riva attended Brandeis University, where she was active in affirmative action struggles. She led a union-organizing drive in 1979 in Rochester, N.Y., and is today president of the Typographical Sector, Media Workers Union, Local 39521, CWA.

She was a leader in the movement against the Gulf War in 1990-91, including the 200,000-strong San Francisco march on Jan. 19, 1991. That year, La Riva initiated the Farmworkers Emergency Relief, aiding Latino farmworkers who lost their jobs in the citrus freeze.

La Riva campaigned against the U.S. blockade that killed more than one million Iraqis. La Riva’s video “Genocide by Sanctions” won second prize for documentaries in the 1998 San Luís Obispo Film Festival. She traveled to Yugoslavia during the 1999 U.S. bombing, producing the video, “NATO Targets.”

In 1994 and 1998, La Riva was the Peace & Freedom Party candidate for governor of California, and an independent candidate for U.S. vice president from 1984 to 2000.

La Riva is a volunteer organizer for the anti-war coalition ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) in the Bay Area. She has been active in the struggle for immigrant rights for three decades, speaking at mass marches in California.

La Riva is coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. She has traveled frequently to Cuba, written extensively on the revolution, and spoke at the million-person May Day rallies in Havana in 2000 and 2002. She has also traveled to Venezuela.

In September 2005, immediately after Hurricane Katrina, La Riva led a delegation to New Orleans, showing the survivors’ heroism in the video “Heroes Not Looters.”

La Riva is a member of the National Committee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.